


Burning Cold

by TheWildHeffernan



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Burns, Cold Weather, Dreams, Gen, Introspection, Javert - Freeform, Javert needs a hug, Les Miserables - Freeform, Nightmares, thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 03:25:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2372765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWildHeffernan/pseuds/TheWildHeffernan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"That's all you are, old whiskers, you silly ass. A man, of middling years, in a state of some disarray." Javert finds himself taking stock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burning Cold

I am no longer shaking. That stage is passed; I am only breathing the feathery breaths of a child, thinking as a child does that small is the same as invisible. Large is then, of course, the same as powerful. I wish I could either be small enough to dissolve completely into shadow, or large enough to escape it, but I am only a boy. I wonder, also where my mother has got to. Do I care? She is gone, certainly. Gone how?

Well, what do children mean when they say gone?

It varies.

What does a grown person mean when they say gone?

Dead.

Her Romany whisperings in my ear have been silenced; her lighthearted vulgarity as she bats her eyes at each man, as she pulls up her tattered skirts to service them- sometimes for cash. More often for other things, for food, perhaps. That, she shares with me, as is her duty as mammal, to feed her child. Drink, which she shares with me for the amusement of watching me try to stand and walk. She and the men laugh as I fall, a drunken smile plastered on my face, bemused as the place swirls about my eyes. She'll do anything, and I know it. For a blanket, for a trinket, for a secret to keep. Or not to.

She was gone with a scream. Or was it a whisper? Or a choking cough, splattering dark to the stone. I don’t remember. Any is as likely as the other. Or perhaps there is a more probable choice; gone with a whirl of skirt and a dark chuckle, her hard gray eyes off-setting in her dark face, her black tangles forming a devil’s halo as she walks away.

Most importantly, her warmth is gone completely. I crack my eyes open to see my hands and feet wrapped clumsily in rags, my knees drawn under my smock to my chin. My lips are blue, and my bones have cooled to the ice of the stone I press myself against. The corner is solid and straight, square as can be. Often I find this comforting; today it is only cold. Stone buildings are always cold, no matter the season or the quality of the stoves. It is January. The stove is at the end of the hall, with the guards. There is snow outside. Prisons are the coldest buildings ever built. I don't know if that is by design, or if those they house make them so, but it is cold.

I will not go towards the other corner, where the monsters and the giants huddle to stay warm. The men in red are faceless. They come in varying degrees of muscle and grime, but little distinguishes them from each other. They will live. They are used to cold like this, they’ve been made to be, and they lack the pride not to snuggle like stray dogs, each trying to steal the other's ration of heat.

I am too young and too small, and I won't survive. Frost has crept up my arms and legs. The dark of my hair has been covered in white particles of ice. Everything is white. My eyes freeze shut, but I can still see. I can see the guard outside the gate, back to us, ignoring the little boy freezing to death on the stone. I find that with some effort, I can speak.

“Monsieur? Help me. Please.” My voice is weak and trembling, but the place is silent. He can hear.

He turns, and his face is not that of a guard. It is a convict, streaked with dirt. It is not the face of a pious factory owner, or a daring criminal. It is merely another man in red, once he's been stripped of all his masks. He should be in here, on the other side, cowering in the dirty, marginal warmth of that mess in the corner. He is the exception, the variant, the one outside the bars that doesn’t make sense. He is wrong. So, so wrong, in every way I can imagine, and all at once, the temperature drops even more, further then I would have assumed possible. The world has stopped its movement, and begins to crumble in this heresy. All there is to do is curl tighter. Here, in this time and swirling place, I am a child. And if I weren’t, there would still be nothing I could do.

My chest splinters in the cold, my limbs shattering outwards into slivers of ice. I scream, but the frozen air swallows the words, whatever they might have been. Everything is breaking.

My left hand has been sore, but all of a sudden it explodes in an an unsure extreme, alarming in that moment where you cannot ascertain which way the thermometer is pointing-

It is burning-

 

 

Javert jerked into a sitting position with a sharp hiss, clutching one hand in the other. He overbalanced in his surprise, and ended up in an undignified heap on his back by the side of the bed, scrambling to his feet with surprising swiftness for a man of forty-eight, gasping silently in pain. His mind was blank and shocked, as he tripped in the flickering darkness over something that may have been his boot. He found the edge of the little table with his functioning hand and searched out the water jug, plunging his hand inside without a moment’s hesitation, cutting off the pain at its crescendo. He stood there for a second as the sensation faded from shock to a bitter pain. Burns hurt more then a cut or bruise, he's found, but you can't stitch a burn. You can only wait. Javert shivered as a draft made its way in through the cracks in the old walls of the building and curled down his spine.

“Well, that’s just rude, isn’t it,” Javert said quietly, either to the room or to the jug, which seemed to have trapped his now pulsing and freezing hand. He pulled at it a few more times, before shuddering and rushing, with more precision, this time, back to a perch on his bed, snatching up his scarf and his hat from where they’d fallen. Fallen? Been thrown, more like. Javert decided that he ought to place his things in a row where they could be reached quickly when needed, not strewn about the place as if they’d blown there by mistake, like the wind through the cracks in the windows and walls of this God- forsaken building. It was bloody freezing in here. Paris is a drafty city, it seemed to him, at least this particular corner of it. In Montreuil-sur-Mer, well, his boss was a criminal, the prostitutes were treated like royalty, but at least the dormitory he’d slept in had been well constructed and almost new, with a very handy stove.

Javert smiled at his little joke as he wrapped the scarf his neck and shoulders, jamming his hat down over his hair. It was a bit too long and streaked with gray, and right now it frizzed out almost horizontal. It had come undone, and it was rather impeding, but he didn’t think he could manage getting it up again with only one hand. His bed was pressed up against the fire, and he scooted to the edge, close enough for the flame to lick the bits of his coat that hung over.

He gazed ruefully at the hem, scorched from previous close encounters, before hunching over, burying his chin in his collar.

“It’s time to take stock, Javert,” he mumbled, his voice low and wry. He addressed himself by his surname, which is decidedly strange, but it was all he'd ever heard, and all he'd ever needed. He had a Christian name on paper, but never in his walking, breathing life. He could vaguely remember a time when he had been Petit Javert- back then, there was a larger Javert around somewhere- but the distinction was dropped when there was no longer another to choose from, and hadn’t changed since.

“Why must you be so close to the fire, or stove, or what have you?” He paused, as if waiting for a response. “That’s right. It’s warm. Why do you need to be warm?” There was another pause. “Because you don’t want to be cold. But you burn your clothes. Merde, you burn yourself, and it hurts like hell, so why? I know why, I know, you dolt. It is dangerous, but not so much as being cold. Cold can kill, though heat can hurt- builds character, they say. Are you afraid of the cold, gitan?” he asked himself.

He was not of a disposition to lie, let alone lie to himself. Wouldn’t that be fifteen times the horror of lying to another? If order can’t be kept in one’s own head, then there was no hope for the rest of the world. It was only fair. Javert had realized long ago that his mind was not quite as efficient as it could be- ordered, perhaps, but maybe too tightly to stand for trivial things to slip by. Some things didn't matter, people always said. Javert couldn't agree- but he didn’t suppose this was a bad thing. It left no room for the sorts of excuses that most men made for themselves- they let everything slip into chaos, and called it something nice- mercy, gentility, kindness, or whatever they thought of first. They wouldn't think it was so nice if they really understood, but nobody did, did they. He, if he had been any sort of philosopher, might have pondered this further, but he was not. Javert didn’t often consider that deeply, and it tended to leave him in a foul mood for weeks when he did.

“Yes,” Javert answered himself, with a minute’s worth hesitation. “Yes, I am afraid of cold.” He frowned.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said at last. “Why not be afraid of criminals, or of wolves, or high places, or of being beaten to death? I know people who are afraid of thunder, for Christ's sake." At least thunder was a nice, average, quintessential fear- unfounded, but nobody would puzzle themselves over it late at night, when they ought to be sleeping. There was a part of him, obviously, that was afraid of criminals, but they were only a threat to him in a dark alley at night. So long as you stay on the right side of the bars. He shivered without knowing why. He must have dreamed of prison cells, for he could still feel himself inside one. He could still feel the flagstones leaching the warmth from his bones.

That one convict had been there. The one from M-sur-M… Valjean. Jean Valjean, but back in his incarcerated days, mad as an animal and smeared with filth. Javert hadn’t thought about him in ages. He didn’t like to think about him. He had made an idiot of Javert, years after his leaving, and as Javert thought about it, however briefly, he could feel the shame bubbling in the back of his throat. He had captured him again, almost a year later. Or nearly. But that time did not bear thinking about. It ate a hole in him somewhere inside, and it killed. The search had gone for a month, and at the end of that, everyone knew Javert was a fool- some sort of lazy cat that played too long with its prey. More like a madman, chasing a delusion and dragging along anyone who he could make to follow. He had drunk that night, alone, something he’d never really done, and would never do again. The absinthe had burned his mouth, but it had numbed the rest of it. He had been ashamed enough by morning to have shot himself, had a gun been on hand, but he had settled for returning to work and replying sarcastically to any comment or sideways glance he earned. He watched his sense of humor fly over the heads of the rest of the police force, but more importantly, he watched the incident dissolve into the past and dissipate into the Parisian smog.

But he’d still rather not think of it.

“But you are now, aren’t you?” Javert said to himself. “Maybe that’s what you’re afraid of. Failure. Yes. You are afraid of failure, disorder, and cold. What a list.” He carefully eased his hand around in the jug, and it eventually popped off, revealing his red and blistering hand. He tore a thin strip of fabric from the edge of a sheet, and wrapped it tight around his wounded appendage. He slipped his glove over it, putting the other on for symmetry.

The fingers were cut off to allow for better movement, which garnered the occasional second glance, but it more important to do his duty than to look the part, and he had given up on that long ago, letting his hair fall into his gypsy eyes, flat silver in a dark face. Someone had told them they glowed in the dark; he doubted this, but he was still grateful as his hair lightened, and he stood out less and less. 

"You'll be old as dirt in a few more years, but hell, you'll look French."

He pulled his battered watch out of his pocket and read the time by the flickering of the dying fire. 2:01. He should be getting back to sleep. He was not a child who had had a bad dream, and had to be comforted. He was… well, he was a grown man who had had a bad dream.

“That’s true, old whiskers, you silly ass. You are just a man, of middling years, in a state of some disarray.”

He laughed his peculiar, silently hysterical laugh, and placed the jug beside the bed. Pulling the quilt over his head and ignoring his throbbing hand, he curled up towards the fire, taking care not to let his arms hang over the edge.

That was better.


End file.
